"A Possible Life" is divided into five sections, each set in a different era and country with apparently no connection between the pieces. It is structured like a book of short stories. It reads like a book of ­stories. But it is a novel. And the challenge, here, is to work out why.

Faulks himself explains:

There are little bits of connections between the five sections, but it's really going to be a bit like listening to a symphony in five movements. Or, if you like, an LP, an album, CD, in which the tracks are separate but the whole thing adds up to more than the sum of its parts.